How to leave? Thus shocked
to blossom, thus accustomed, heat-sure
and solid?

The risk grows abstract;

What offering’s expanded?
We’re past departures;
How to split again?

We eat and eat and eat
and still our hands are clean.

Sophie Klahr’s poems, essays and reviews appear in Ploughshares, The Rumpus, Gulf Coast, B O D Y, Sycamore Review, Linebreak, and other publications. She is the author of the chapbook ________ Versus Recovery (Pilot Books), and is a contributing editor at Gigantic Sequins. She lives in Los Angeles.